326 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



youth is only amused ; the former groans inwardly while the 

 latter laughs aloud. Maturity carries with it a store of sensi- 

 bilities that are trodden on by everyone in the crowd in which 

 it is mixing. Youth having just issued from school or college 

 life, looks upon this new state merely as an exchange from 

 partial thraldom ; has no corns to offer to the roughshod tread ; 

 takes no offence because it feels none ; and is prepared to enjoy 

 everything heartily. The only thing for maturity to do is 

 of course to harden the cuticle, and commence the process 

 without delay. Youth may possibly and very pardonably 

 think well to adapt itself to circumstances and to men so 

 closely, that before long it is found figuring in proud imitation. 

 But this at all events maturity will not find itself called upon 

 to do. Live and let live is the maxim to which the men of the 

 West rigidly adhere ; and they no more expect a fullgrown 

 Britisher to clothe himself in stars and stripes than they will 

 deride what they cannot but consider the quaint eccentricities 

 of manner and language that he brings with him. He has 

 merely, and for his own sake, to inure himself to their ways. 

 They neither ask him to adopt their idiosyncrasies, nor will 

 they attempt to make him ashamed of his own. Indeed, in 

 this latter respect they set an example that we might follow 

 with considerable advantage in the Old Country, where a 

 queerly-dressed or funny-looking foreigner has in every street 

 to run amuck through gibes and grins and ill-mannered 

 whisperings. 



The social acclimatisation of the coming ranchman may in 

 some measure commence on board his Atlantic steamer, or will 

 at any rate begin in New York. By the time he has reached 

 Chicago he has at least learned to make a single plate, with 

 one knife, fork, and spoon, carry him through dinner without 

 finding his appetite arrested ; his ears will have become more 

 or less callous to the unceasing sounds of laborious expectora- 

 tion ; while he will have come to look upon a quid of tobacco 

 as a plaything only a little more unsightly than a Piccadilly 

 toothpick. He will no longer think it strange that a fellow 



